If you are or were one of those students or readers who hate Shakespeare, take heart. Many have come before you. In fact, people have even re-written Shakespeare. For instance, there is a version of Lear where Cordelia lives. And I’m not talking about the Moore book.

Even in this day and age, Shakespeare has been banned or challenged and otherwise deemed unacceptable. There are a great many countries that have deemed the plays “Those that Should Not Be Read”. This occurred from the beginning. Queenie Lizzie 1 wasn’t too happy about Richard II being performed at the request of a certain Earl.

Other reasons for various rejections of the plays include the supernatural, teenage intercourse, heterosexuality intercourse, homosexuality, witchcraft, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and violence.

And I think cannibalism, but I’m not sure about that one.

For me, this means that E.L. James and Shakespeare are in a group together, and I find that disturbing. Seriously disturbing.

There is much that is disturbing in Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet are problematic for me because Romeo is in love with someone else at the beginning of the play. Why not focus on Romeo being a male slut or an inconstant lover instead of the teen intercourse? At least they got married first (though whether or not it is binding is a different matter). Or how about Romeo killing Paris? Talk about jealous possessive asshole babies.

And if you are going to ban Titus, how about because if you are going to murder a woman’s husband and then rape her, why not simply kill her afterwards? Leaving her mouth to write out what happened seems a bit stupid.

Or if you are going to get upset about all the intercourse in Shakespeare, why not focus on the jokes as well as the title of Much Ado about Nothing?

Or how about the malicious attack on hunchbacks that is Richard III?

And Hamlet, let’s forget about the blood or about the fact that the devil wins everything in the end, how about the abuse of those poor actors that occur in that play? Would you like Prince Hamlet telling what and how to act, and then piss of the king?

Or Tony and Cleo? There’s animal abuse in that. The poor snake has to bite a woman who used crocodile dung as a contraceptive.

Or Othello – think of the abuse that the handkerchief takes in that play. And poor strawberries.

I mean, honesty, if you are going to constantly attack a group of works over the course of hundreds of years, could you be a little more creative in the reasons for not reading it?